Julia Lee
- Associate Professor of English at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California
- https://profjulialee.com/media/
Short bio:
Julia Lee is a Korean American writer, scholar, and teacher. Her memoir, Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America, is forthcoming from Henry Holt in April 2023. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
Longer bio:
Julia Lee is a Korean American writer, scholar, and teacher. She is the author of Our Gang: A Racial History of The Little Rascals and The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel, as well as the novel, By The Book, which was published under the pen name Julia Sonneborn. She is an associate professor of English at Loyola Marymount University, where she teaches Black and Asian American literature. She lives with her family in Los Angeles.
PUBLICATIONS
Memoir
Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America. Henry Holt, 2023.
2023 Best Books of the Year—The New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews, New York
Public Library
Profiled in Publishers Weekly
Reviewed in the New York Times, New Yorker, Boston Globe, Kirkus
Reviews (starred)
Recommended Summer Nonfiction Read by Today Show
Recommended AAPI Books by Katie Couric Media
Interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, NPR’s
Full Disclosure with Roben Farzad, NPR’s Under the Radar with
Callie Crossley, Chime TV, and WYXR’s Let’s Grab Coffee
Scholarly Books
Our Gang: A Racial History of “The Little Rascals.” Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 2015.
2017 Peter C. Rollins Award, Southwest Popular/American Culture Association
2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered, CBC One “q,” KCRW’s The
Treatment, and KTTV Fox 11’s Midday Sunday
The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010. (Paperback 2012).
Novel
By The Book. New York: Gallery, 2018. (Published as Julia Sonneborn)
Amazon Book Club Recommendation
Barnes and Noble Book Club Recommendation
Optioned by MarVista Entertainment
Scholarly Articles
“Intertextuality.” Frederick Douglass in Context. Ed. Michaël Roy. Cambridge
University Press, 2021.
“Mary Seacole and the Virtual Nation.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal.
(Feb. 2019).
“Slavery and Victorian Literature.” The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature. Eds. Pamela K. Gilbert, Linda K. Hughes, and Dino Franco Felluga. Blackwell Publishing, 2015.
“Sylvia’s Lovers, England’s Friends.” Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations 17.2 (October 2013): 117-137.
“The (Slave) Narrative of Jane Eyre.” Victorian Literature and Culture 36.2 (Summer 2008): 317-329.
“The Return of the ‘Unnative’: The Transnational Politics of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 61.4 (March 2007): 449-478.
“Knucklebones and Knocking-Bones: the Accidental Trickster in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” African American Review 40.3 (Fall 2006): 461-474.
--. Reprinted in Modern Critical Interpretations: Invisible Man, New Edition, ed. Harold Bloom. Chelsea House Publishers (2009).
Entries on Zamba, Peter Still, Lewis Clarke, Noah Davis, William Green, James W. C. Pennington, Venture Smith, Robert Voorhis. African American National Biography, eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
General Interest Articles
“When People of Color Are Discouraged From Going Into the Arts.” The Atlantic (February 28, 2016).
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/oscars-so-white-academia-stereotypes/471291/
“When Two ‘Little Rascals’ Crossed the Color Line.” What It Means to Be American. The Smithsonian and Zocalo Public Square (Jan. 19, 2016). http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/01/19/when-two-little-rascals-crossed-the-color-line/chronicles/who-we-were/
“Examining America’s Rhetoric of Postracial Progress.” University of Minnesota Press Blog (July 22, 2015). www.uminnpressblog.com
“Why I Teach Black Literature.” The Blog. Huffington Post (Feb. 3, 2015). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-lee/why-i-teach-black-literature_b_6606736.html
Book Reviews
Review of Tim Armstrong, The Logic of Slavery. Cambridge Journal for Postcolonial Literary Inquiry (2013).
Review of Amanpal Garcha, From Sketch to Novel: the Development of Victorian Fiction. Studies in the Novel 42.4 (2010): 480-482.
Socials
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/profjulialee/
Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@profjulialee
Press
“Summer Book Recommendations by NY Time Bestselling Author Qian Julie Wang.” The Today Show (May 26, 2023). Video link here.
“Briefly Noted.” Book Review. The New Yorker (May 22, 2023)
“Julia Lee, in ‘Biting the Hand,’ traces the fallout of straddling two different worlds.” By Rhoda Feng. Boston Globe (May 4, 2023)
“Biting the Hand: Korean American Author Calls for Weaponizing Invisibility.” NPR’s Morning Edition with Michel Martin
“Becoming Asian American: From Neither/Nor to Both/And.” By Jean Chen Ho. New York Times (April 18, 2023)
“Reckoning with Race.” By Emily Alford. Publishers Weekly (February 2023)
Midday Sunday: “Our Gang: A Racial History of The Little Rascals.” Fox 11 Los Angeles with Tony Valdez
Author Julia Lee joins Elvis Mitchell to discuss how a children’s show from the 1920s attempted to transcend racism. “The Treatment” with Elvis Mitchell
“Our Gang” Chronicles Lives of African-American Actors in “The Little Rascals.” NPR’s All Things Considered with Robert Siegel
“The Complex Racial History of The Little Rascals.“ q with Shadrach Kabango, CBC Radio.
“The Little Rascals Revisited.” With Carrie Kaufman on KNPR State of Nevada.
“The Book Our Gang Reveals the Complicated Racial History of The Little Rascals.“ Tony Mostrom, LA Weekly (January 19, 2016)
“Our Gang: A Racial History of The Little Rascals“: A New Book Offers a Different Perspective on the Feisty Crew of Kids. By Ann Hulbert, Atlantic Monthly (December 2015)
Review. Publishers Weekly (November 2015)
Weekly Q&A: COLOR VISION: UNLV English Professor Julia Lee Delves Into All Shades of America. Las Vegas Weekly (March 25, 2015)
“Why I Teach Black Literature.” An Interview with KNPR’s “State of Nevada.” (March 2015)
Korean Julia Lee Bring New Face to Black Literature. Diverse: Issues in Higher Education (January 2014)